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Old Posted Dec 23, 2011, 6:32 AM
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wburg wburg is offline
Hindrance to Development
 
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 2,402
City identities change over time--plenty of cities' current identity doesn't bear much relation to their past identity, for good or ill. Compare Detroit or St. Louis in their current state to their stature at their height, or Seattle and Portland today compared to 30 years ago before they became media darlings due to fashions in urban planning or rock music.

As to what identities this city has had, just look at its past. We were never a sleepy farm community or bucolic small town. We were born as a city, as a center for trade and transportation. We grew up in the shadow of our bigger sister San Francisco, which in some ways stunted our urban growth, especially as the folks who got rich here tended to move there to build great public works, and left their old Sacramento houses to use as orphanages. We were an industrial city, turning the product of the surrounding resource area into something that could be shipped, and even building railroads to allow the shipment of those goods (and locomotives to pull those trains.) We were a sin city too--where farmers, miners and migrant workers came to blow their hard-earned pay on booze and debauchery, and Sacramentans, natural merchants gifted at separating workers and travelers from their paychecks, provided the services they desired, even when they were illegal (for example, Sacramento pretty much ignored Prohibition.) We were a creative city, with our own homegrown musical and artistic talent--even if so many of the talented left for San Francisco to seek patronage from the wealthy who had moved there first. So a lot of the credit due to those who did remain is seldom suitably recognized, because it's just "folk art" or "pop art," or in the case of some Sacramentans who have received international prominence for their creativity, some assume they aren't worth knowing about if they are from here.
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